This is a story about our journey to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to meet and adopt one or two children--kids who, as our son Zachary puts it, "have no Mama or Papa". Bishkek is in Central Asia, and lies on an ancient network of caravan tracks first explored in the second century B.C. as the main trade route between the West (Syria and Turkey, and the Black and Mediterranean Seas) and the East (China)--the exotic and romantic "Silk Road".

Friday, March 30, 2007

“In this life, we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love….”--Mother Teresa

We picked up Margarita and Sergey on Tuesday, with great joy, trepidation, curiosity, and a pervasive sense of peace. They ran to us when we walked into their area, and jumped into our arms. Well-prepared by the caretakers for our arrival?--maybe, but I believe there was real emotion and sincerity there. They had made cards for us, in their crafts time, Rita’s with pictures of flowers and Sergey’s with a picture of an airplane. We visited a little with the caretakers and the other kids we had played with on the last trip (though a few had “gone home” to America in recent weeks to their new families--hooray!). We dressed the kids in the clothes we brought for them, so the orphanage could keep their clothing, and soon left. The caretakers were sad to see these children leave, children who are clearly some of their “favorites”--there were smiles and hugs and tears all around. Margarita and Sergey were, though, amazingly focused on, well, getting out of there. They said their goodbyes and piled into the car, eager to move on the next, unknown phase of their lives….The last few days have had ups and downs--fortunately, many ups and only a few downs. We are all getting to know each other, feeling each other out, testing. We had been told by others that have internationally adopted older kids that there is often a “honeymoon” period for a few weeks just after adopting, where kids are not secure enough to let you see their “difficult” sides. Then eventually, when they figure you’re not going to “return" them they will begin to test you and the power struggle begins. We have seen a little of both here already…

These kids are great kids--very bright, curious, independent, social and affectionate. Their naivety is scary sometimes, however--their lack of fear regarding everyday things, like busy streets, leaving the hotel room without Mom or Dad (!), or walking away with strangers. These are some of the hardest things to deal with without a common language--how to impart these warnings to children who don’t perceive any issue. It has really been the source of the few tantrums we have seen.

So what have we been doing? Well, unfortunately the weather has turned cold and rainy, so we have been cooped up quite a bit in our room. We brought a reasonable supply of hotel-toys--puzzles, Hot Wheels, dolls, trains and train tracks, a Leap Pad. In addition, we brought a selection of DVDs we thought they might enjoy, ranging from English language animated films and musicals, to a few Russian-language videos we picked up at Moscow airport (so far the favorite is Sound of Music, in English). Margarita is extremely interested in electronics, and really good at working with them, so she has enjoyed the Leap Pad, the electronic English-Russian translator we brought, and Mom’s laptop computer (oh, dear). Sergey loves the train set (look out Zachary!). We have tried to have at least one outing a day, even in the damp weather, just to give the kids (and us) a break from the hotel. Most days it has been a short walk up to the local grocery store, or to the fruit stand vendors on a nearby neighborhood street. One day we were required to appear with our children at the US Consulate, for some paperwork. Yesterday however we used the hotel’s inexpensive shuttle to take us to a local park, near the center or town, and we walked around for an hour or so, visiting the train station, a local pastry vendor, and the playground area of the park. That was a lot of fun, though we were all freezing by the time we got home.

We’ve been eating mostly at the hotel--usually room service for breakfast, lunch down in the restaurant, and dinner at one location or another. Scott and Carolyn, here with their infants Jack and Daniel, have also stayed pretty close to the hotel, due to the cool, wet weather. It is supposed to warm up soon; I hope so cause we are getting close to cabin fever--more clashes with the kids today than in recent days, and I think it’s due to the kids’ boredom--and ours.We spoke with Zachary on the phone yesterday for the first time, all of us. It was pretty funny, everyone talking at once in two different languages. I think Zach was very excited to hear from his brother and sister, and they were definitely interested in talking to him. Now every time I boot up my laptop, they run over and grab the external headset, calling Zachary’s name, thinking I am about to make a voice-over-internet Skype call to their brother….

It’s been a little hard to post, it sort of takes both of us to keep things under control much of the time. But I’ll try to post tomorrow with some anecdotes and special moments from our first days with Margarita and Sergey… We feel truly, truly blessed that we have been given this wonderful opportunity, a chance to do this “small thing” for these kids, and complete a journey within ourselves at the same time….

Monday, March 26, 2007

"The world is round, and the place which may seem like the end, may also be the beginning..." Ivy Baker Priest

We go to pick up our kids tomorrow. While it seems like the end of a long twisting journey for us, it is truly an amazing beginning and the start of a huge--HUGE--new chapter in the life of our family....

We safely arrived in Bishkek yesterday, back to the Golden Dragon, after an enormously long and tiring series of airplane rides and layovers. The “short” 4-hour flight to Atlanta was followed by an 11-hour flight to Moscow, a 12-hour layover in Moscow airport, and then another “short” 4 ½-hour flight to Bishkek. We will, I guess, never again view our typical flights to Chicago or Atlanta as lengthy! The good news was that the breakfast buffet was still layed out when we arrived at the Golden Dragon, and our rooms were ready, so we got a hot breakfast of stir-fried chicken and vegetables, and some fruit, ran a few errands and then met with our coordinator to get started on the paperwork for the week. Dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant later, then a good 11-hour night’s sleep.

Today has been easy--our coordinator Lyudmilla and her husband Sergey took our paperwork and our passports to the nearby US consulate for processing, so we did not have to appear in person. They are obtaining a visa for us and the kids to enter Kazakhstan, the neighboring country, where we will have to travel next week in order to finalize paperwork for the kids’ immigration (the regional US embassy, who handles this, is in Almaty, Kazakhstan). We continued to recover from the trip and later in the day we went grocery shopping, stocking up with healthy snacks in preparation for little mouths to feed…

Tomorrow we go to Tokmok orphanage to pick up the kids, and we are so excited! The other families we traveled with are here as well, though only one spouse from each couple made this second trip. They are also very excited to get their babies. It is definitely going to be a challenging week, all of us out of our element and our usual environment for handling kids. But at least the weather is much nicer here than the last trip, and we are scoping out places where we can take the kids to play or walk, when we start to get cabin fever. We have an embassy appearance on Thursday, but really after tomorrow when we get the kids it is mostly down time until next Monday, when we travel to Almaty.

Monday, March 19, 2007

We finally have a firm travel date to return to Kyrgyzstan--we depart this Friday, March 23rd, and should return with Maggie and Sam on April 5th. What a long wait it has been, wondering if they are healthy and if they remember us and if they are still excited about coming to America. Though time has passed slowly in some ways, in others it has flown by--it has taken time to put into place new household living arrangements, doctor's appointments, dentist appointments, child care plans, clothes and toys for a girl (in a household with plenty of boy-stuff), etc. But the packing has begun and we're looking forward to our departure.

Here is how this trip will go, to our understanding--we arrive on Sunday, on Monday we go to the embassy to do paperwork, on Tuesday we go to the orphanage to pick up the kids. On Wednesday it's back to the embassy for additional paperwork, with kids in tow, then Thursday through Sunday is waiting, waiting. On Monday we are driven to Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, where there is a more full-service US embassy. The children are examined in the medical clinic there (for communicable diseases that would prevent their entry into the US), and if all is well, on Wednesday they are issued a visa to enter the US. They will actually travel with a Kyrgyz passport, but as soon as they clear immigration at their first US port (Atlanta), they will be US citizens. Whew! I know you've figured out from this that, like the whole international adoption process over the past year, there is a lot of "hurry-up-and-wait". Also, you've probably noticed that we will have Maggie and Sam with us in Bishkek and Almaty for over a week, in various hotel rooms. That should be pretty interesting, learning to parent two kids we can't communicate with in a couple hundred square feet of space! We hear, though, that the weather there is much improved, so we hope to be able to take them to the park or for walks, as much as possible.

You should know that the world of Kyrgyz adoption is quite small at the moment; I would guess that less than 20 families have travelled there to adopt children so far. It is a country that just opened for adoption last year, so there are only a very few agencies doing adoptions there and the number of people who have completed their adoptions, or are waiting to adopt, is still fairly small (but growing). Many of us who are working through this process are internet/email buddies--it helps with the waiting and the dissemination of information, etc. An example of how small this particular world is are some of the photos on this particular post. They were sent to us just last week by our friend Tina, who has been at Tokmok meeting her infant girl for the first time. She and her husband took their 4-year-old daughter with them, and, during Mom and Dad's bonding time with the infant at he orphanage, her daughter was allowed to play with--you guessed it--Maggie and Sam. So Tina talked to them at length about us, how we were returning soon, brought them fruit to eat, and sent us several photos of their time with her. It was so great to be able to "check in" on them from a distance, and remind them that we are indeed coming back for them.

Well, the new children's room is ready, we are frantically packing for us and two kids who we barely know, and Zachary is stressing out big time (suddenly worried about sharing, sleeping arrangements, and being left behind on the trip). Please keep us in your prayers as we travel again, and we will post as often as time allows once we arrive. The journey continues....

"Our children are not ours because they share our genes...They are ours because we have had the audacity to envision them.That, at the end of the day--or a long sleepless night--is how Love really works..."Author Unknown